Development of Indian finfish and shellfish biodiversity knowledge base to foster the assessment of biological diversity of Indian seas.Biodiversity valuation of marine organisms in selected marine ecosystems along the Indian coast.Assessment of fishing impacts on biodiversity loss with reference to threatened species and fisheries management.Monitoring the conservation biology of economically important and threat-prone species and fragile ecosystem.Development and Maintenance of database of Maine Biodiversity Museum to dissiminate the information on the web to make it easily accessible to all

Ongoing Research Projects:

a. In-house projects :

Bioinventorying and biodiversity valuation of marine Indian waters with special emphasis on formulation of management measures for conservation

Investigations on vulnerable coral reef ecosystems of Indian waters with special emphasis on formulation of management measure for conservation

Assessment of fishing impacts on biodiversity loss, with special reference to the Threatened species, to formulate management options for their protection

Completed Research Projects:

a. In-house projects :

Understanding the threatened coral reef ecosystems of southern India and designing interventions aimed at their restoration

Species variation and biodiversity of the fishes of the family Lutjanidae of India

Assessment of Biodiversity and Ecological Changes in Open Sea Cage Farming

Biodiversity valuation of marine ecosystems of the southwest coast of India

Technologies developed for the propagation of Sinularia kavarattiensis in the laboratory and in open sea

Technologies developed for the propagation of soft corals – Cladiella laciniosa, Dampia pocilloporaeformis and Lobophytum pauciflorum in the laboratory

Technologies for the propogation of sponges and hard coral were developed

Deep-sea sponge species new to science (Semperellame galoxea sp. nov.) reported from Andaman waters : Registered in World Porifera Database (WPD) and World Register of Marine Species (WORMS)

Four species of corals, Acropora thomasi, A. valamunensis, A. mannarensis and A. josephi new to science described.

Bleekeria murtii – A fish species new to science described

A unique bacterial strain C29 isolated from Porites sp. from Vizhinjam was subjected to 16S rRNA gene sequencing and blast search. This strain was found to be a potential novel genus showing similarity to Fabibacter halotolerans under the family Flexibacteraceae